Oklahoma lawmaker: Being gay ‘is not a civil right. It’s a human wrong!’

An Oklahoma lawmaker has responded to a federal judge’s ruling this week that a state law banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional by insisting that people don’t even have a right to be homosexuals in the first place.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Terence Kern ruled that the Oklahoma ban on same-sex marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

And state Rep. Sally Kern (R) is livid.

“Homosexuality is not a civil right. It’s a human wrong!” she told KOTV.

“Homosexuals are saying this is who we are, this is how we’re born,” Kern added. “You tell a lie long enough, people start to believe it.”

James Williamson, the former state lawmaker who drafted the constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in 2004, said that he wasn’t surprised that the law had been overturned.

“The federal courts have always taken a much more activist view of the constitution and so that was always a risk that they were going to see that,” Williamson explained.

He asserted that over 60 percent of Oklahoma voters would still vote to discriminate against LGBT people because it was an issue of states’ rights.

“Many people are very disappointed that states don’t have the right to decide such basic fundamental issues like who should be allowed to marry,” Williamson said. “I think what we did was the right thing back then and it’s the right thing right now.”

About the Author

David Edwards has served as an editor at Raw Story since 2006. His work can also be found at Crooks & Liars, and he's also been published at The BRAD BLOG. He came to Raw Story after working as a network manager for the state of North Carolina and as as engineer developing enterprise resource planning software. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidEdwards.